Click this link for an ecumenical prayer service resource (pictured above), written from a Christian perspective by Marlette Black, PBVM. You're free to download and reproduce it to celebrate International Peace Day.
This reading from that service honors the poets, making it a fitting tribute to The Peace Tree's Poetryman:
Making Peace
A voice from the dark called out,
‘The poets must give us imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar imagination of disaster.
Peace, not only the absence of war.'
But peace, like a poem,
Is not there ahead of itself,
Can't be imagined before it is made,
Can't be known except in the words of its making,
Grammar of justice,
Syntax of mutual aid.
A feeling towards it,
Dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
Until we begin to utter its metaphors,
Learning them as we speak.
A line of peace might appear
If we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
Revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
Questioned our needs, allowed long pauses...
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
On that different fulcrum; peace, a presence, an energy field more intense than war,
Might pulse then,
Stanza by stanza into the world,
Each act of living
One of its words, each word
A vibration of light-facets
Of the forming crystal.
--Denise Levertov
